Why did they put Psychic Scream as a talent? One of the priests signature spells...

I strongly hope that they'll rework and add some new talents here.

Because it makes sense. If you look through all the classes the CCs are talents so you can pick your venom. It is the approach they are taking with MoP and I for one embrace it. Talents have been useless since vanilla when we figured out the best ones through theory crafting and cookie cut our specs. There is alot more variety with these talents in the sense that you pick your style of CC, style of damage increasing ability instead of just picking all the best dmg increasing stuff or all the CC you can muster.

They're horrid. Truly the worst tree right now, and by far. I'm tired of seeing players lean on "calm down, we're in development." We have been given no indication of how deep into development we truly are. I can tell you right now that I am not satisfied with a single one of these talents - they are ALL re-used, do not offer a single new CC (trade in psychic scream for any of two crappier CCs?) or survivability (we actually lost survivability via the loss of Hymn, renew, and PoM). Furthermore, we have once again been denied the slightest bit of motility in PvP. We remain the only caster class to lack an effective method of slowing or out pacing our opponent.

The only way at this point that I would be content with my shadow priest is if EVERY ONE - EVERY SINGLE ONE of these talents were scrapped, and the entire tree re-done. The tree doesn't need tweaking at this point, it needs destruction. Part of my worry is that we are a class with 2 healing specs, and Blizzard lack the ability to work that into our tree as a DPS spec.

So right now given that Account bound pets and mounts are confirmed, I'm playing my druid and plan to make him my new main come MoP. A shame, but that's the sad state of our class right now.

I'm going to re-use a post I already made weeks ago to reply to this topic about pandarian talents, because it was quite long and I said everything I think.

Sorry in advance for the re-post to everyone who already read it.

Disclaimer: I'm not a lore geek. I don't know deeply the priest class lore, so I'm basing my opinions simply on gameplay and how I 'feel' it.

For now, I am extremely disappointed on how the priest is shaping. I know that they are still 'heavy developing it' but they have not shown nothing particularly relevant in my opinion.

I think there is a 'conceptual problem' within the priest class: not only it's the only one with two healing trees, but the dps tree is the anthitesis of the class' 'main aspect'. If we take druids or shamans for example, we have trees that are respectively based on nature, and elements. Skills and abilites are not brutally 'separated', they are more like different ways to use the same things. Even paladins have the light and the faith as the main concept, the light that can heal, protect, smite the foes...

But if we take the priests, we have light and shadow. Even if you can say that these two elements are linked by concept such 'two faces of the same medal', in my opinion the still feel too different. We can't have sparkling shiny Light on a shadow priest, and abilites like Shadowfiend feel 'wrong' for a holy one. Sure, we use it in game, because we have to, but I think is a bit 'strange' that for example my utilites as a shadow priest are almost all Holy spell that kick me out of my beloved shadow form. Shadow priests for me are so particular and intriguing that appears like a different awesome class.

This is especially infuriating when I see that every hybrid has spells and abilities that work in every form, or have effects based on the spec they are in. Take a look at the druid talents: almost everything works in every form, or has different effects. Look at Guardian of Ancient Kings, or at the new Ascendance shamanic spell. Then I look at our talents, and I see Divine Star, Desperate Prayer, and maybe Vow of Unity, typically holy spells, and I can oly imagine that they will be unusable in shadowform.

I think that a interesting approach for a 'dualism-based' class like the priest would be giving each talent a “holy/shadow” counterpart. Event if it doesn't change the effect, just for the flavour. Desperate Prayer / Dark Mending for example. How about doing Divine Star / Black Hole? And so on...

Speaking on our current pandarian talent tree and abilities, I think it's a horrible situation. Each other class is obtaining cool new spells, entire new mechanics, new 'concepts', and generally new things that without knowing how they will balance everything scream 'OP and gamebreaking' very loudly. But we priest get nothing new. Nothing cool. Every talent tier bar the first one is something we currently already do, or a boring 'you do X a little better' talent. Many things are quite 'healer oriented' and as a shadow priest I don't want them.

I'm saying already said things here, but... A tier 6 full of 'tank saving' abilities is boring. Since I started playing my shadow priest (TBC) every 'end spell' has been something tailored mainly for healers. Mass Dispel (that actually is awesome for a shadow priest too, especially because it's in the disicpline 'school' and it has an anti-magic feel like Mana Burn), then Divine Hymn, then Leap of Faith. Void Shift feels shadow-themed, yes, but still it has a good-samaritan-healing-touch in it. I mean, I understand that a priest class sounds healer-esque, but as I said at the beginning, I think that the intrinsec dualism should be handled in a way such no one of the two roles feels neglected in terms of 'feeling'.

My character is a shadow priest, I want him to manipulate the Shadow energies, not being a healer in disguise that when in danger goes all 'Oh, it's time to be shiny and depend on the Light! Screw shadows, get sparkles!'. Other hybrids don't do that, conceptually. And this situation is emphatised by Shadowform: the shadow priest is balanced around the fact that it has the right mitigation and damaging capabilities when it's active. It's not an 'awesome bonus that bring us ahead'. So why are we forced to go in and out every time we need to cast some holy utility?

TL;DR: A shadow priest rants like an old grumpy man and presents his view on what we know about how this class will be in Pandaria.

Does not seem they are changing anything to make that spec ever appealing. For the time I had a priest, shadow lasted longer than several days when I was leveling.
Now that talents are the same for everyone, it's all up to spec abilities to make shadow any good.

Unless blizz comes up with something way better than our current state + the cataclysm state i will be changing main... been playing priest for 6 years and i've never hated my class more than during cataclysm, even tho i think its an awesome expac.
Blizz didnt touch priests enough during cata....

I think the changes Cataclysm brought to Shadow was awesome.
I enjoyed playing shadow since TBC, and that did certainly not change with Cata!
Hopefully it wont change in MoP, but like Naga Coatl pointed out they really got to do something with the talents.
Nothing new added, except for the CC options in the first tier is lack lusting. All spells priests get are cornered for healers, and it is annoying.
How hard would it have been to just make speccing shadow turn our Leap of Faith into a spell usable in shadowform? Those tiny little details eventually stack up...

Don't know about the rest of you, but I'm pretty miffed that Carrion Swarm is a new Warlock spell and not a Spriest one. Considering Carrion Swarm is a Dreadlord ability and Shadow Priests are pretty much mini-Dreadlords, I was really hoping we'd get Carrion Swarm someday. The rest of the priest talents look pretty bland, I'm really hoping they'll change that, I'd hate to have to go play a tank lock.

Last edited by Ansible; 2012-03-22 at 12:12 PM.

Armory
You are not your role. You are not how much gold you have on your account.
You are not the mount you ride. You are not the contents of your bank.
You are not your epic purples. You are not a special and unique snowflake.
You are the all-grinding, all-farming crap of Azeroth.

I'm right there in the dumps with you guys at the moment. The more I keep hoping to read something good about spriests, the more and more disappointed I'm getting. I haven't looked lately, but has anyone compiled a well thought out criticism to post on the class forums? I love my priest, I love playing her, and I really don't want to have to be MS heals, or swap to one of my other 85s for my main in MoP. If things don't change, I feel I might not have a choice.

Oh...and keep making mages OP as hell in PvP Blizz....I can counterspell while casting or channeling? Cool. I get an instant mana free Frost Nova after Iceblock AND I'm immune to spell damage? Awesome. Good luck seeing spriests anywhere in PvE or PVP with where we stand right now.

Personally, I like the rotation on beta atm.
There's only two dots to take care of, and we get to actively use shadow orbs to deploy shadowy apparitions when we deem fit;
mind blast on cd to generate more orbs, and no clumsy empowered shadows which cripple you whenever you fail to have them up.

So they changed mind blast and orbs to work the same like holy shock and holy power? Then they removed one dot and spread its effects between the remaining two. And then they gave us 2 procs (SW and Mind Spike). Unimpressed. Dire.

Talents have been useless since vanilla when we figured out the best ones through theory crafting and cookie cut our specs.

I completely disagree. Disc had a lot of interesting options. Instead of making other trees like disc, though, they removed talents and half of disc's options and tools. And what they've done to shadow with orbs and utility? Sigh.

I'm not very happy with the Shadow of Death talent (shadow version of Divine Insight). It will work fine in PvE, but for PvP it's quite awkward and random burst. So I whack my Mind Blast key, possibly lining it up with some apparitions reaching the target - and then what? Do I smack Shadow Word: Death right away in the hopes that I get the proc? Do I cast something else while I figure it out, or do I just flap around a bit? This sort of thing generally doesn't play out well.

Currently the SP changes is pretty good so far. They did make Shadow Orb (SOrb)less RNG, and also Shadow Apparition (SPP) is now instant spell cast on whichever target you want. Regardless, there are still missing a few talents in beta. Our glyphs are still missing atm as well.

Shadow Orb (SOrb) now proc off Mindblast, and chance to proc off SW:Pain. You can cast Shadow Apparition (SPP) immediately you generate SOrb. So sometimes you get to cast 3 SPP. You can also change your target and cast SPP on different target.

The Divine Insight talent is very good, it makes MB to proc (quite frequently) Mindmelt which changes your SWeath spell to as the target were below 20% health. What this mean is it's amazing nuke spell. So, with SW:Pain up, MindSpikex3, MB, then SWeath, then SPPx1-3 (depend how many orbs generated by that time). One thing I also noticed is that my 4-piece T13 bonus to reduce SW:death feedback not working, I am not sure it's intended or not.